


but we were in screaming color

by badboy_fangirl



Series: This Ain't a Love Song [1]
Category: Friday Night Lights
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 06:01:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4908067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lyla reflects on all things Riggins (and Street and Garrity).</p>
            </blockquote>





	but we were in screaming color

**Author's Note:**

> [](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/americanoutlaw/media/Ship%20pics/tim-and-lyla-photo_zps9swzlope.png.html)   
> 
> 
>  
> 
> Title lifted from Ryan Adams cover of Taylor Swift's "Out of the Woods."

Every year, her birthday is a grand affair. Her mother perpetuated it from her infancy, and all through grade school and junior high, she would have as sleepover. By the time 9th grade came around, a sleepover seemed a little immature, but at the same time she really wanted to have the big party. And that's the way it's always been.

At Lyla Garrity's house, her birthday was a big deal. The more the merrier. The center of attention. Daddy and Momma's little princess, holding court.

She thinks Jason might have just broken up with her, on her birthday, when she's been trying everything she knows to support him and make him feel better about all this stuff (being paralyzed). Suddenly the happiest day of the year has crashed and burned, and the world around her shifts so drastically, she doesn't even know what to do. It's not even about her birthday, not really. All her plans have evaporated right before her eyes. Finishing high school and following Jason wherever he was going to go for college, getting her degree unless he wanted to get married before he went pro, setting up house near the home base of whatever team he is drafted to (Cowboys, of course).

But then Tim Riggins is walking on the side of the road, wet, sloppy, jackassy. She wants to run him over with her car, but she settles for jumping out of it and slapping his smirky face instead. Then she just starts hitting him wherever she can and somehow they end up in the backseat, a pile of arms and legs. His breath is hot against her neck, and his lips are warm and soft, a contrast to the pressure of his hands as he directs her hips. She straddles him, sinks down on him, and in the maelstrom, there is this moment of quiet.

Her mind narrows. There are Tim's lips against hers, his hands up under her dress, his fingers moving her panties to the side, and then _him_ , hard and bare and full inside her. Somehow she's still thinking about Jason through all of it, but instead of the chaos of what might happen, whether he'll ever get better, or the fact that everything she planned is completely obliterated, all it comes down to is how mad she is at him for giving up, for taking it out on her, for all her prayers not being answered.

Tim's voice is a beacon in the night, and while one of his hands stays steady against her waist, guiding her movements up and down, the other slides under the ponytail at the back of her neck. He pulls her face to his, tugs her bottom lip between his teeth and coaxes out the cries from her throat. They are no longer connected to her tears, but instead the mounting pleasure building inside her. "There you go, baby," he whispers. His hand scoots along, under her jaw, his thumb rubs against her lips before dipping into her mouth. She licks it, tastes the rain on his skin, feels her temperature spike when he commands, "Suck it," because she knows it's dirty and wrong but so delicious in this way she's never known before.

He drags his hand from her face and tucks it between where their bodies are joined together. The moisture from her tongue lingers on the thumb he presses against that sweet spot, and Lyla Garrity sees the end of her 16th birthday through the white light erupting behind her closed eyes. She says his name, "Ti-im," on a sob that echoes in the small space of her parents' backseat, and then he pushes up against her, hard, the force of it snapping her eyelids open just in time to see the explosion of pleasure across his face from the filtered-in street lights.

She had always thought Tim was cute, but in that moment, he's beautiful to her. The wet patches of his tears, the sign of his vulnerability, the truth, that they are both completely helpless in this horrible situation gives her a lull. Lethargy in panic, just for a short span. She lays her head against his shoulder and stays in his arms long after their hearts have calmed. His hands run the length of her back, having unzipped her dress after the orgasm, not that it matters.

She might even sleep for just a few minutes before the reality settles in and she has to scramble to get home.

(See, the thing is, every year after that Tim Riggins will be a part of her birthday, no matter where she is, or how long it's been since she's seen him.)

(It's a memory she treasures.)

 

 

Tim won't talk for long stretches, even when she wants him to. Then he'll make some grandiose speech that she knows he really means, but how seriously can you take him when he's drunk?

That's what she thinks that day with Jason at the river; their little jailbreak that makes them all feel the way they did before the accident, even if for just a brief moment.

(She realizes later, he wasn't that drunk.)

Except now things can never be the way they were before the accident. She feels his eyes on her as surely as his hands have been there, and she can't erase it. She can't change how she sees him now, how he makes her feel, or how it's both completely wrapped up in Jason and totally separate from him.

It was born of shared grief and pain, but it is now so much about Tim and Lyla as individuals that she knows Jason must see it all over their faces. But the day goes on, and he's happier than she's seen him since everything went wrong, not suspicious at all. He laughs and teases and seems just like the boy she's been so in love with for two years.

"He can never know what happened between us, Tim," she says as they watch Jason go back into the hospital.

"I know," he replies, his eyes full of all the things that shouldn't be there. "I get it," he says emphatically, like maybe she thinks he's stupid. "I'm gonna miss you," he adds.

(When he holds her just a little too long as they hug goodnight, she lets him. Because she's gonna miss him, too, and this is the last time she'll ever be close to him.)

 

 

She's not even sure why she goes to Tim's to tell him that Jason knows. If Jason knows, there's nothing anyone can do about it, except, well, try to lie their way out of it. Lyla is not a good liar, though, and as she's pleading with Tim on his doorstep it suddenly hits her that he isn't a good liar either.

She doesn't know why she assumed he would be, since she knew from day one that he was devastated by Jason's accident and that his avoidance was much more about how uncomfortable he was than how Jason felt. 

Being selfish doesn't make you liar. And sleeping with your paralyzed best friend's girlfriend doesn't make you one either. Maybe it was just easier to attribute all bad things to Tim, because if she doesn't, she's just going to fixate on the gentle way he touched her and the smile that would steal over his face right before he kissed her, and the fact that right now, right here on his porch, he reeks of sex but he's basically telling her that he would be with her, damn the consequences, if that's what she wanted.

(That's _not_ what she wants.) 

(At all.)

Tyra comes to the door, stands next to Tim, also reeking of sex, and asks after Jason. Lyla literally doesn't know what else to do, so she _lies_ some more because that's working out so well for her. She fumbles her way to her car, and drives away with her hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly it hurts her palms.

Her guilt is driving her insane. She doesn't care about Tim (well, she cares about him, but not like _that_. She definitely doesn't care if he's back to sleeping with Tyra), and she doesn't want him back, all she wants is it to not have happened. (Five times.) All she wants is hers and Jason's perfect life and plans back, all she wants is for things to go back to how they were.

(All she wants is the simplicity of throwing everything in her life down the drain and then to just stop caring about the mess of it all, and that's before she gets labeled the town slut.)

(It would also really help if Tim didn't try to help in his awkward way. It melts her heart and makes her even madder at herself for letting this happen, for letting him care about her so much, for needing him so much that she never even stopped to think what she would do on the other side of it.)

 

In the end, Jason forgives her. He forgives Tim. It takes her longer to forgive them all for not being what she thought they were. Jason is her first love, but Tim is the love of her life. Which is probably backwards, but that's the way it goes.

Really, all it means is that she can't have either of them, at least not forever. Texas forever wasn't really ever part of her game plan, if she's honest with herself.

It's a gloomy spring day in Nashville with a tornado warning siren going off in the background when her daddy calls her to tell her that Tim Riggins is going to prison.

 _Cars stripped for parts_ , he says and she imagines Tim and Billy and their half-cooked thought processes. She wonders about Mindy and the baby that should have come by now.

Buddy Garrity's gentle tone shows that the days of worrying about his daughter dating Tim Riggins is a thing of the past, which is ironic to the nth degree. Especially when he encourages Lyla to write to him because "the boy's gonna need some source of Christian love in a place like that."

She doesn't say, "Daddy, I can't," but she manages to get off the phone rather gracefully considering how broken her heart is now.

(The worst part is wondering if her staying would've changed everything.)

**Author's Note:**

> So, I am totally late to this party, but I have all these ideas and stories in my head going a hundred different directions, but it's all going to fall under the same umbrella of canon/head-canon for my OTP for this show. So I'm creating a series to organize them, though there won't be any specific order to read them in.


End file.
